Masha'il bint Fahd Saud (Saudi Princess) and Khaled Mulhallal al-Sha'er, Masha'il was shot 6 times in the head and Khaled was beheaded with 5 blows to the head, July 15, 1977[edit]

Her family sent her, at her own request, to Lebanon to attend school. While there, she fell in love with a man, Khaled Mulhallal al-Sha'er, the nephew of the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon and they began an affair. When, upon their return to Saudi Arabia, it emerged that they had conspired to meet alone on several occasions, a charge of adultery was brought against them. After attempting to fake her own drowning and being caught trying to escape from Saudi Arabia with Khalid, disguised as a man but being recognized by the passport examiner at Jeddah airport, she was returned to her family. Under Sharia law, a person can only be convicted of adultery by the testimony of four adult male witnesses to the actual sexual penetration, or by their own admission of guilt, stating three times in court "I have committed adultery." There were no witnesses. Her family urged her not to confess, but instead to merely promise never to see her lover again. On her return to the courtroom, she allegedly repeated her confession: "I have committed adultery. I have committed adultery. I have committed adultery."

On 15, July 1977, both were publicly executed in Jeddah by the side of the Queen's Building in the park. The Princess was given the dispensation of being shot, six times in the head, rather than stoned. He, after being forced to watch her execution, was then beheaded with a sword by, it is believed, one of the princess' male relatives. It took 5 blows to sever his head, which was not the work of a professional executioner. Despite her royal status, she was blindfolded, made to kneel and executed on the explicit instructions of her grandfather, a senior member of the royal family, for the alleged dishonour, she brought on her clan and defying a royal order calling for her to marry a man selected by the family.

Following the execution segregation of women became more severe and the religious police also began patrolling bazaars, shopping malls, and any other place where men and women might happen to meet. When Prince Muhammad was later asked if the two deaths were necessary, he said, "It was enough for me that they were in the same room together".

The sentence could not be appealed: guilty for converting to Christianity, a young Saudi woman was set alight by her father, who first had cut her tongue.

Not an ordinary father, but a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Against Vice [the Muttawa], a sort of police watching over the moral behaviour of the citizens of Saudi Arabia and the full compliance with the rules of the rigid Wahabi doctrine, by using whiplashes on the legs for too high heels and arresting men and women not linked by marriage or family bonds for meetings in restaurants.

To the injury of the conversion, the woman [using the pseudonym, "Rania"] had added also the insult of the written word, by writing articles with Christian-religious content on blogs and regional websites. The brutal news reported by the United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s daily Gulf News reflects the reality of Saudi Arabia, a conservative and intransigent country, and throws ice-cold water on the image of an oil kingdom which says to be ready to open up partially to other religions, an image painted by the recent gestures of the king Abdallah Bin Abdelaziz.. . .

The father of the burnt alive Saudi woman, as reported by sources close to the victim, is investigated for “honour killing” and not “murder”, a motif which if acknowledged, might lead to a sentence of up to three years in prison, because caused by the necessity to “wash the shame of dishonour” fallen on the entire family, for the unbecoming behaviour of the daughter.